The Canadian economy is already bearing the brunt of climate change, warns another study, this time by the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) in Ottawa, Yves Giroux. But if the trend continues, the bill will be at least eight times higher by the end of the century.
Last year, the average temperature in Canada increased by almost 1 degree Celsius (0.9 ° C) compared to the normals observed from 1961 to 1990, while precipitation was 2.5% higher, reported Tuesday the DPB in an analysis of about forty pages. The impact of these changes on agricultural production, economic productivity, human health, infrastructure, energy use or even climate-dependent activities resulted in a 0.8% decrease in the product gross domestic (GDP), i.e. the loss of the equivalent of just under $20 billion.
Even if all governments around the world were to keep their greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction promises they have made so far, the average temperature in Canada would rise by 0.7°C by 2050 and nearly double by the end of the century. Rather than a decrease of 0.8% in GDP, the Canadian economy would then show a decline of 2.4% in 2050 and 5.8% in 2100.
The economic consequences promise to be even worse if we do not trust countries’ promises and only take into account their GHG reduction measures that have actually been implemented or are in the process of being implemented. In this case, the average temperature in Canada would rise another 2.3°C by the end of the century, and the economic losses would be at least eight times higher (6.6%) than they already are.
These estimates remain incomplete, warns PBO, because they do not fully account for several aggravating factors. The transition costs associated with moving to a lower-carbon economy have not been estimated, for example, nor the more serious repercussions that climate change could have on the global economy, the damage inflicted by an increase in extreme weather events or global warming, which will be much more pronounced in the Canadian Arctic.
And then, the upheaval of the climate will not only have economic effects, of course, continues the PBO. In particular, it will also have “many effects on health, well-being, nature and ecosystems”.
Reduction and adaptation
The PBO analysis comes just as the UN climate conference (COP27) begins in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. “While the impact on Canada’s GDP stems from global GHG emissions, Canadian emissions are not significant enough to affect climate change,” observed PBO in its report. Accordingly, Canada’s primary means of limiting the economic costs of climate change is to participate in a globally coordinated emissions reduction regime. »
Canada has another way to reduce the damage inflicted by climate change, which this time depends only on Canada, the Climate Institute of Canada (CCI) argued earlier this fall in another study. on their economic impact. It is a question of accelerating its efforts not only in terms of reducing GHGs, but also of adapting to the new climate reality.
The ICC estimated that half of the benefits of economic growth would soon go to repairing the damage caused by climate change and that the situation would deteriorate rapidly thereafter, unless these two objectives of reduction and ‘adaptation.
Taken in isolation, they would each have the power to reduce the economic cost of climate change by 50%, but carried out in parallel, they could reduce the bill by 75%, it was reported. Adaptation measures alone would thus have the capacity to transform $1 of investment into $5 of reduction in the cost of direct damages, in addition to bringing in another $10 of broader impacts on the economy as a whole, for a total win of $15.